Page List

Font Size:

‘You have quite an imagination. That’s just one of the things I don’t know about you.’

She frowned a little. ‘What do you mean? One of the things you don’t know?’

He cleared his throat. ‘I mean, there’s lots we don’t know about each other. But we seem to be, you know, getting close.’ Bloody hell, this was difficult. Especially as he wasn’t sure if Jodie was even over the last bloke she’d had feelings for. All he knew was that contentment was no longer enough for him. He wanted more. He wanted everything life could throw at him. Especially if that meant he could have Jodie. ‘What I’m trying to say, somehow, if I can just bring myself to stop gabbling on, is that I have feelings. For you. Big ones.’

Her frown left her face. She grinned, even. ‘Big ones?’

Was she making fun of him? Was this like pulling his hamstring all over again? Was she about to walk away?

But no. She wasn’t. Instead, she said, ‘Well, that’s good. Because I have feelings for you.’

Okay, now what he wanted to say seemed less difficult. ‘Love feelings? Are they as big as love feelings?’

She blinked, and he realised how ridiculously he was rushing things. ‘Don’t answer that—answer this instead. Here’s what I’m thinking. If Katoomba has no hold over you … why don’t you stay here in Clarence? I’d like you to. Carol’s asked you to. You and I can see whether this—’ he touched his finger from his chest to her collarbone and back again, ‘—is what I think it is.’

She just sighed, and said, ‘Big feelings,’ again, like she’d stopped listening to actual words. And he knew, he justknew, that she was in this—whateverthiswas—as deeply as he was.

‘Or, I could go there with you. For a while. See what life could look like for us. I could help you with the drive back, maybe, if you weren’t ready to make a decision.’ She hated driving, he knew that; she had issues about driving and road carnage and speed. He could be there for her.

The timer on his phone buzzed.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said. ‘It’s showtime.’

‘And the winner is …’ The judge, Thelma Kong, who was also the Mayor of Clarence, according to her ten-minute monologue about herself and all the wondrous things she had done for Clarence, paused to look down at the white envelope in her hand.

Jodie cared who won the fruit cake contest. Of course she did, and hadn’t she been involved in a Very Important Way herself with all the booze brushing she’d done in Carol’s kitchen?

Only … it was hard not to just stand there in a sort of dreamy daze. She and Will … exchanging words. Promises. Hopes, dreams,feelings. Could this moment be any better? Who cared about cake when their heart was bursting with joy?

‘Hmm, such a lot of glue on this envelope. Anyone would think this award was hotly contested,’ the mayor was saying. The woman was dressed in the sort of padded-shoulder power suit Jodie hadn’t seen since she’d spent a summer binge-watching eighties romcoms, and her heels were high. As inhigh—so high that when a commotion began in the cluster of people nearest the display table, Thelma wobbled perilously.

Jodie turned her head to see what was going on, but then an urgent male voice was making itself heard above the noise of the crowd in the marquee: ‘Bloody hell, someone’s collapsed.’

There was a collective intake of breath before the crowd all started exclaiming at once.

Was it Carol?Please, Jodie thought, beginning to elbow her way through the crowd despite the way her innards had grown rigid and the pressure in her eardrums had begun to pound.Please don’t let it be Carol.

She could not cope with more loss. Not now. Not ever, probably, but definitely notnow, just when she’d started to heal. Just when she and Carol had been getting to know each other as friends as well as relatives.

Jodie and Will had arrived too late to get a front row seat to the judging, so she was not well positioned. She could just make out the trestle tables through the shifting crowd, where over a dozen fruit cakes were displayed, their stocky, fruit-studded shapes missing identical wedges where the samples had been taken, but the rows of plastic chairs between her and the cakes were full, and the judging area had been roped off by some officious committee minion.

She was closer now—elbows and determination were working—and soon she was close enough to see through the inner circle of people. She looked up, and eyes met hers from the small modular stage. The judge-mayor-lady in the suit. Will’s dad, Robbo. A heavily built man with a bald head and a seventies cop moustache who Carol had introduced her to but whose name now escaped her because her thoughts had started to jumble. He—moustache man—jerked his head in her direction in acome here quickway. And then he said what she didn’t want him to say: ‘I’m sorry, love. It’s Carol.’

Chapter 14

‘Bloody hell.’ The words were out of Jodie’s mouth without her even thinking them as she flung her way forward. Her great aunt was prone on the grass, her floral dress a little rucked up by her knees, but otherwise as neat as ever. She could have been a wax doll.

But that thought brought with it other thoughts … embalming thoughts, eulogy thoughts, coffin thoughts.

‘She’s alive though, right?’ she said. She demanded it, in fact, although even as the words were spoken, she could see that Carol was breathing. Moving slightly, even, her forehead puckering into a frown the way it did whenever Jodie mentioned Clarence Gardens, or Katoomba, or Janelle.

Jodie dropped to her knees, pulling her phone from her pocket as she did so. She knew there was an ambulance here—she’d seen it, earlier, and been delighted to see the paramedics engaged in such happy community work as painting butterfly wings on kids’ faces—but an emergency was an emergency and dispatch would be faster at locating them than sending someone running. She hit triple zero like a girl who’d won a typing prize at high school. ‘Yes. Ambulance. The Clarence Pub. In the cake judging tent set up in the beer garden.’

‘Everyone clear back,’ ordered a loud voice behind her. Will, bless him, getting the press of people away.

She tried to listen to what the emergency services officer was saying but it was hard to hear.

‘Breathing? Um … yes I think …’